A range of day-long courses for practitioners that each focus on a different aspect of the design process.


This suite of one-day courses is aimed at design practitioners who have some experience of working on design projects in the built environment and who want to take time to develop a specific aspect of their practice. These courses are stand-alone, or can work as a set.

The approach that we take to developing design skills is to recognise design as a process that can be broken down into a series of teachable and learnable steps. The courses in this suite take a look at a specific step in the design process, be that working with a client to identify their needs, developing ideas in response to a brief, or making difficult decisions in a design team context.

This set of courses gets to the heart of some of the trickier aspects of successful design practice – Oliver Broadbent, course facilitator.

The courses we offer in this series are:

  • Reading and writing an effective design brief
  • How to have ideas
  • Modelling and testing – the art of choosing and improving ideas
  • Effective decision-making for designers
  • Selling your idea

Specific learning outcomes for each course are provided under the event headings below.

Featured image of article: Design thinking – in-depth tools and techniques

Course outcomes

See individual events for the learning outcomes related to each topic.

Pre-requisites

This course is aimed at built environment professionals with at least two years’ experience in practice.

Related Courses

Events

Featured image of article: Reading and writing an effective design brief
Description

This day-long workshop focuses on one key step in the design process – the reading and writing of effective design briefs. This is the stage at the start of the design process at which the key parameters are set which can influence the entire nature of the final design. It is a stage at which misunderstandings can have significant long-term consequences; it the stage at which designers must check that the right problem is being solved; it is a stage at which a great deal of value can be added to the outcome. It is crucial therefore that professionals working in the early stages of a design project have the skills to read and write an effective design brief.

Our approach goes much deeper than simply understanding the written requirements of a design brief. On this course we encourage participants to think about the missing information in a brief: the implied, the assumed, and critically, the unknown. Drawing out this hidden information is key to reading and writing a good brief. We also consider the relationship that the brief has to all the other stages in the design process, and how the brief itself may change over the course of the design. Understanding design briefs is about understanding people, and so we use a role-play-based approach to get under the surface of a written brief.

The content and delivery method for this course is drawn from over fifteen years of design teaching for engineers at universities and in business. Our approach at Think Up is always to provide practical guidance so that participants can go away and apply the techniques immediately and feel the benefits in the short-, medium- and long-term.

Learning Outcomes
  • Describe the relationship between the brief and the other stages in the design process
  • Describe the problems that arise from misunderstanding in the brief.
  • List the characteristics of a good design brief
  • Recognise and describe hidden information in a brief
  • Define the concept of the ‘Designer’s paradox’ and describe techniques for resolving it.
  • Use a range of techniques for better understanding a client’s needs
Related Events
Date: To Be Arranged
Host Organisation
Think Up
Location

The Clove Building
4 Maguire Street
London
SE1 2NQ

Cost
tbc
Featured image of article: How to have ideas
Description

This day-long workshop focuses on one key step in the design process – the generation of ideas. This is the part of the design process when, the brief having been defined, the process of divergent thinking starts. It is the time at which the designer draws upon a wide range of information, not just drawn from the brief and background research, but also wider interests and experience. The combination of this information in the mind and a whole range of stimuli causes the designer to experience an idea. This is the part of the process at which the project stands on the point of greatest potential – and yet it is a process in which many built environment professionals have little or no training.

Our approach to training people in how to have ideas is to treat idea generation as a series of steps, each of which require particular skills, and each of which can be learnt. These steps range from short-term techniques to generate ideas in a particular moment through to long-term strategies to gather information which will support creative thinking in future. In this course we also focus on group dynamics which support effective idea generation. During the day, participants will respond to a series of design briefs to test and identify techniques which work for them.

The content and delivery method for this course is drawn from over fifteen years of design teaching for engineers at universities and in business. Our approach at Think Up is always to provide practical guidance so that participants can go away and apply the techniques immediately and feel the benefits in the short-, medium- and long-term.

Learning Outcomes
  • Describe a model for how ideas are generated
  • List and use techniques for gathering the different sorts of information we need to have ideas
  • Describe and use techniques to stimulate divergent thinking
  • Describe and use techniques for stimulating ideas through conversation
  • Explain the role of subconscious in idea generation and design routines to harness this type of thinking
  • Use prototyping as a means to support idea generation
  • Present ideas to help develop concepts further.
Related Events
Date: To Be Arranged
Host Organisation
Think Up
Location

The Clove Building
4 Maguire Street
London
SE1 2NQ

Cost
tbc
Featured image of article: Modelling and testing – the art of choosing and improving ideas
Description

This day-long workshop focuses on two key stages in the design process, modelling and testing and their impact on design as a whole. These two stages move the design process from divergent thinking to convergence on a preferred solution. Models are the means by which we express our ideas and test their adequacy against the brief. Creating models themselves can help us generate ideas, and they can be used a short-hand for expressing more complex ideas. The tests we apply to our models range in character from objective to highly subjective and depend on the requirements of the brief. Together these processes sit at the heart of the design process and effective design depends on their mastery.

Many built environment professionals are expert users of one or more modelling tools, be that producing hand sketches or constructing finite element models. This course goes beyond individual modelling techniques and helps designers understand the wider role of modelling and testing in design so that they can use models and tests more appropriately to iteratively develop better ideas. The course explores the different functions of modelling and the different types of tests that designers need to apply in their work. The material is covered in a mixture of group discussions and role-play-based exercises.

The content and delivery method for this course is drawn from over fifteen years of design teaching for engineers at universities and in business. Our approach at Think Up is always to provide practical guidance so that participants can go away and apply the techniques immediately and feel the benefits in the short-, medium- and long-term.

Learning Outcomes
  • Describe the role of modelling, testing and judgement in the design process
  • Use a range of modelling techniques to manifest ideas in the real world
  • Identify and use common models and tests applied in design
  • Describe and use modelling and testing as a technique for iterative design improvements
  • Make iterative modifications to a brief during the design process
  • Use modelling techniques as design short-hand
  • Use modelling as a technique for generating ideas
  • Describe how different types of model can be used as a communication tool
Related Events
Date: To Be Arranged
Host Organisation
Think Up
Location

The Clove Building
4 Maguire Street
London
SE1 2NQ